byuu says:
This adds RTS/CTS support to the serial communications emulation. Okay,
well the PC acts as if it is always ready, because it always is even on
the real thing, but the PC-waiting-for-SNES side works.
Source only, hardware communication only works on OS X and Linux
(Windows serial communication is totally different, I don't feel like
writing a Windows version), more documentation will come later.
byuu describes the changes since v067:
This release officially introduces the accuracy and performance cores,
alongside the previously-existing compatibility core. The accuracy core
allows the most accurate SNES emulation ever seen, with every last
processor running at the lowest possible clock synchronization level.
The performance core allows slower computers the chance to finally use
bsnes. It is capable of attaining 60fps in standard games even on an
entry-level Intel Atom processor, commonly found in netbooks.
The accuracy core is absolutely not meant for casual gaming at all. It
is meant solely for getting as close to 100% perfection as possible, no
matter the cost to speed. It should only be used for testing,
development or debugging.
The compatibility core is identical to bsnes v067 and earlier, but is
now roughly 10% faster. This is the default and recommended core for
casual gaming.
The performance core contains an entirely new S-CPU core, with
range-tested IRQs; and uses blargg's heavily-optimized S-DSP core
directly. Although there are very minor accuracy tradeoffs to increase
speed, I am confident that the performance core is still more accurate
and compatible than any other SNES emulator. The S-CPU, S-SMP, S-DSP,
SuperFX and SA-1 processors are all clock-based, just as in the accuracy
and compatibility cores; and as always, there are zero game-specific
hacks. Its compatibility is still well above 99%, running even the most
challenging games flawlessly.
If you have held off from using bsnes in the past due to its system
requirements, please give the performance core a try. I think you will
be impressed. I'm also not finished: I believe performance can be
increased even further.
I would also strongly suggest Windows Vista and Windows 7 users to take
advantage of the new XAudio2 driver by OV2. Not only does it give you
a performance boost, it also lowers latency and provides better sound by
way of skipping an API emulation layer.
Changelog:
- Split core into three profiles: accuracy, compatibility and
performance
- Accuracy core now takes advantage of variable-bitlength integers (eg
uint24_t)
- Performance core uses a new S-CPU core, written from scratch for speed
- Performance core uses blargg's snes_dsp library for S-DSP emulation
- Binaries are now compiled using GCC 4.5
- Added a workaround in the SA-1 core for a bug in GCC 4.5+
- The clock-based S-PPU renderer has greatly improved OAM emulation;
fixing Winter Gold and Megalomania rendering issues
- Corrected pseudo-hires color math in the clock-based S-PPU renderer;
fixing Super Buster Bros backgrounds
- Fixed a clamping bug in the Cx4 16-bit triangle operation [Jonas
Quinn]; fixing Mega Man X2 "gained weapon" star background effect
- Updated video renderer to properly handle mixed-resolution screens
with interlace enabled; fixing Air Strike Patrol level briefing screen
- Added mightymo's 2010-08-19 cheat code pack
- Windows port: added XAudio2 output support [OV2]
- Source: major code restructuring; virtual base classes for processor
- cores removed, build system heavily modified, etc.
byuu says:
Re-added blargg's DSP, but this time I merged only spc_dsp and also
fixed the initial regs for Dual Orb II. Which restores the 5-10% speedup
on the compatibility and performance cores. Fixed the initial register
values for the fast CPU core, which fixes Armored Police and the other
Atlus game's title screen in the performance core. Added a missing
debugvirtual prefix to op_step, which fixes CPU stepping in the
performance core. I was using the description field for profile
identification in savestates, but that was of course the description for
the state manager. Whoops. Added a new field for profile name to the
save states, and fixed the state manager to work with that change.
Adjusted the about screen colors, which is how you can tell which core
you're using without it being annoying. Probably did some other stuff
too, meh.
byuu says:
Removed snes_spc, and the fast/smp + fast/dsp wrappers around it.
Cloned dsp to fast/dsp, and re-added the state machine, affects
Compatibility and Performance cores.
Added debugger support to fast/cpu, with full properties list and Qt
debugger functionality.
Rewrote all debugger property functions to return data directly:
- this avoids some annoying conflicts where ChipDebugger::foo()
overshadows Chip::foo()
- this removes the need for an extra 20-200 functions per debugger
core
- this makes the overall code size a good bit smaller
- this currently makes PPU::oam_basesize() inaccessible, so the OAM
viewer will show wrong sprite sizes
Used an evil trick to simplify MMIO read/write address decoding:
- MMIO *mmio[0x8000], where only 0x2000-5fff are used, allows direct
indexing without -0x2000 adjust
So end result: both save states and debugger support work on all three
cores now. Dual Orb II sound is fixed. The speed hit was worse than
I thought, -7% for compatibility, and -10% for performance. At this
point, the compatibility core is the exact same code and speed as v067
official, and the performance core is now only ~36-40% faster than the
compatibility core. Sigh, so much for my dream of using this on my
netbook. At 53fps average now, compared to 39fps before. Profiling will
only get that to ~58fps, and that's way too low for the more intensive
scenes (Zelda 3 rain, CT black omen, etc.)
It would probably be a good idea to find out why my DSP is so much
slower than blargg's, given that it's based upon the same code. The
simple ring buffer stuff can't possibly slow things down that much.
More precisely, it would probably be best to leave blargg's DSP in the
performance core since it's a pretty minor issue, but then I'd have to
have three DSPs: accuracy=threaded, compatibility=state-machine,
performance=blargg. Too much hassle.
Only code in the core emulator now that wasn't at the very least
rewritten for bsnes would be the DSP-3 and DSP-4 modules, which are
really, really lazily done #define hacks around the original C code.
byuu says:
Fixed bsnes launcher on Windows XP
Fixed Windows bsnes launcher internationalization support (emulator can
be in a folder with spaces and Japanese characters, and you can drag
a Japanese file name onto the launcher, and it will load it properly)
Moved fast CPU to use a switch table for MMIO, unfortunately for no
speed gain
Bus::read/write take uint24 parameters for address, luckily no speed
penalty
MMIOAccess gained a handle() function, and hid the mmio[] table. Makes
hooking it cleaner
Added malloc.h header to nall/function.hpp to fix a ridiculous GCC 4.5.0
error
Fixed a fairly large bug in the fast CPU IRQ handler, which fixes
Robocop et al
Forgot to bump revision to .24 in the compiled binaries, too lazy to
recompile or hex edit to change them
Unfortunately, in order to add nice battery usage, I have to add the
sleep calls to the video and audio wait loops. But they don't know
anything about the GUI and its settings, nor do I really want to make
them know about this setting. I do not want to force allow it. Even with
the media timer trick, Sleep(0) makes Vsync+Async fail a lot more
frequently than never sleeping at all. I would rather laptop users
suffer 100% utilization of a single core than for all users to not be
able to get good audio+video sync. Not sure what to do about that, so
I'll probably just remove the battery usage comment from performance
mode for now.
byuu says:
Added missing $4200 IRQ lock, which fixes Chou Aniki on the fast CPU
core, so slower PCs can get their brotherly love on.
Added range-based controller IOBit latching to the fast CPU core, which
enables Super Scope and Justifier support. Uses the priority queue as
well, so there is zero speed-hit. Given the way range-testing works, the
trigger point may vary by 1-2 pixels when firing at the same spot. Not
really a big deal when it avoids a massive speed penalty.
Fixed PAL and interlace-mode HVIRQs at V=0,H<2 on the fast CPU core.
Added the dot-renderer's sprite list update-on-OAM-write functionality
to the scanline-based PPU renderer. Unfortunately it looks like all the
speed gain was already taken from the global dirty flag I was using
before, but this certainly won't hurt speed any, so whatever.
Added #ifdef to stop CoInitialize(0) on non-Windows ports.
Added #ifdefs to stop gradient fade on Windows port. Not going to fuck
over the Linux port aesthetic because of Qt bug #47,326,927. If there's
a way to tell what Qt theme is being used, I can leave it enabled for
XP/Vista themes.
Moved HDMA trigger from 1104 to 1112, and reduced channel overhead from
24 to 16, to better simulate one-cycle DMA->CPU sync.
Code clarity: I've re-added my varint.hpp classes, and am actively using
them in the accuracy cores. So far, I haven't done anything that would
detriment speed, but it is certainly cool. The APU ports exposed by the
CPU and SMP now take uint2 address arguments, the CPU WRAM address
register is a uint17, and the IRQ H/VTIME values are uint10. This
basically allows the source to clearly convey the data sizes, and
eliminates the need to manually mask values when writing to registers or
reading from memory. I'm going to be doing this everywhere, and it will
have a speed impact eventually, because the automation means we can't
skip masks when we know the data is already masked off.
Source: archive contains the launcher code, so that I can look into why
it's crashing on XP tomorrow.
It doesn't look like Circuit USA's flags are going to work too well with
this new CPU core. Still not sure what the hell Robocop vs The
Terminator is doing, I'll read through the mega SNES thread for clues
tomorrow. Speedy Gonzales is definitely broken, as modifying the MDR was
breaking things with my current core. Probably because the new CPU core
doesn't wait for a cycle edge to trigger.
I was thinking that perhaps we could keep some form of cheat codes list
to work as game-specific hacks for the performance core. Keeps the hacks
out of the emulator, but could allow the remaining bugs to be worked
around for people who have no choice but to use the performance core.
byuu says:
Added OV2's XAudio2 driver (it's better and faster than the DirectSound
one)
Fixed DirectInput keypad number codes
Added launcher to make the profiles work
Profiles now called: Accuracy, Compatibility, Performance (not debating
names anymore)
The launcher isn't going to work on OS X because of the .app folder
bullshit (yes, yes, .sfc folders.)
It also crashes on Windows XP for god only knows what reason. Works fine
on Windows 7 and Linux. So XP users, rename the .dll files to .exe to
test this release. I'll fix it on Monday.
The color highlighting fucks up the radio boxes on the Windows classic
theme, because Nokia can't afford a god damn QA team.
Lastly, I forgot to add launcher to the make archive-all command, so the
source for it will be in the next WIP.
byuu says:
This moves toward a profile-selection mode. Right now, it is incomplete.
There are three binaries, one for each profile. The GUI selection
doesn't actually do anything yet. There will be a launcher in a future
release that loads each profile's respective binary.
I reverted away from blargg's SMP library for the time being, in favor
of my own. This will fix most of the csnes/bsnes-performance bugs. This
causes a 10% speed hit on 64-bit platforms, and a 15% speed hit on
32-bit platforms. I hope to be able to regain that speed in the future,
I may also experiment with creating my own fast-SMP core which drops bus
hold delays and TEST register support (never used by anything, ever.)
Save states now work in all three cores, but they are not
cross-compatible. The profile name is stored in the description field of
the save states, and it won't load a state if the profile name doesn't
match.
The debugger only works on the research target for now. Give it time and
it will return for the other targets.
Other than that, let's please resume testing on all three once again.
See how far we get this time :)
I can confirm the following games have issues on the performance
profile:
- Armored Police Metal Jacket (minor logo flickering, not a big deal)
- Chou Aniki (won't start, so obviously unplayable)
- Robocop vs The Terminator (major in-game flickering, unplayable)
Anyone still have that gigantic bsnes thread archive from the ZSNES
forum? Maybe I posted about how to fix those two broken games in there,
heh.
I really want to release this as v1.0, but my better judgment says we
need to give it another week. Damn.
byuu says:
Since we're now talking about three splits, that's getting a bit out of
hand.
This WIP combines everything back into one project again. Added the
src/fast folder that has all the speed-oriented cores.
A slight slowdown to csnes from what it was before, I'm using blargg's
accurate DSP. I just don't like the idea of releasing a less accurate
DSP core than Snes9X v1.52 has. Plus the fast DSP core doesn't serialize
yet.
I moved back to snes_spc 0.9.0 because I care more about Tales and Star
Ocean than I do about Earthworm Jim 2. So if you try EWJ2 on csnes,
expect it to sound like it does on Snes9X. In other words, don't wear
headphones if you value your hearing.
The middle-of-the-road bsnes core uses blargg's accurate DSP, because
it's about 3% faster than mine which removes all of blargg's
optimizations. There is absolutely no accuracy loss here. bsnes v067.20
that is included should be equal to v067 official.
Performance:
Code:
asnes = 58fps
bsnes = 172fps +2.97x
csnes = 274fps +1.59x +4.72x
The binaries are not profiled, so that's an additional 15% slower from
the previous builds.
Save states only work on asnes, as I don't know how to serialize
blargg's cores yet. The copy_func thing is very confusing to me for some
reason. The debugger won't work anywhere.
Outside of that, please go ahead and bug test. Once I get the debugger
and save states working, I'll build some profiled v1.0 releases for all
three, and we can test that for a bit and then release.
byuu says:
12-15% faster than v067.10, and my Atom never goes below 58fps for
normal lo-res games at this point. Just a little more and I can leave
Async on. That's pretty much it though for the low hanging fruit.
Everything else will be a lot of work for a little gain. Speedups are
from range testing across scanline boundaries and from using blargg's
fast DSP core.
Snes9X is now only 1.93x faster than bsnes, and bsnes is now faster than
Super Sleuth.
I also fixed the Circuit USA menus (HDMA timing adjustment), Wild Guns
flickering (IRQ lock) and Jumpin' Derby (external IRQ triggering.)
There's definitely a lot of troublesome games, mostly the same ones we
had in the past (Koushien 2, Robocop vs The Terminator, etc.) I'm
definitely going to debug Starfox, but I may not bother with some of the
more obscure ones.
byuu says:
I wrote a new CPU core from scratch. It has range-based IRQs, and is
good enough even to run F-1 Grand Prix and Sink or Swim. It also uses
a binary min-heap array for the timing priority queue. This resulted in
a ~40% speedup.
I also added in blargg's snes_spc library, which is an S-SMP + S-DSP
emulator. I am still using his accurate DSP core, and not the fast one.
This gives an additional ~10% speedup.
THIS IS NOT PERFECT, THERE WILL BE BUGS!
I already know that Tales of Phantasia and Star Ocean are hitting some
edge cases. Now that it's fast enough, hopefully blargg can take a look
at it. Something he couldn't test before because you can't rip SPCs of
these games, so it's probably something simple.
My CPU core also doesn't nail every last possible edge case. So things
like Wild Guns and the two or three games that rely on NMI/IRQ hold
aren't going to work ... yet. Be patient.
The SuperFX and SA-1 cores are still cycle-accurate. It wouldn't hurt
compatibility to reduce their precision a bit.
End result is that you can now get well over 60fps in normal games even
n a first-generation Intel Atom.
byuu says:
This adds some sync.sh improvements to make it handle errors more
gracefully.
It also updates asnes a good bit. All of the four base processors now
have all publicly accessible functions right at the top of the main
headers, and everything else is private. This is to allow these headers
to essentially take the place of the previous base classes in the old
bsnes-merged format. So if there's something public there, you need to
implement that exact function to make your own module.
I removed the frame counter from the PPU, as it has nothing to do with
emulation. That now resides inside the Qt -> SNES interface code. Quite
amazing, I was actually saving the frame counter into the save state
files before, yuck.
Removed some baggage in the System class: it was friending a bunch of
long-dead functions and classes.
Forgot to re-add the CHEAT_SYSTEM define to info.hpp, so that's been put
back.
byuu says:
This fixes libsnes and debugger builds, and collapses bsnes/ppu/bppu to
bsnes/ppu and bsnes/dsp/sdsp to bsnes/dsp. It also introduces
bsnes/sync.sh, which will synchronize all of asnes/ with bsnes/,
excepting the custom speed-focused modules. So far, that's bsnes/ppu
(scanline renderer) and bsnes/dsp (state machine.)
Should make keeping the two ports in sync much, much easier. It's
basically the same thing as before, only you run sync.sh and have a few
duplicated folders now. May make it clearer by creating a stub/ or src/
folder inside bsnes to do all of the copying, so that you only see the
custom folders in bsnes/' root directory.
byuu says:
This fixes libsnes and debugger builds, and collapses bsnes/ppu/bppu to
bsnes/ppu and bsnes/dsp/sdsp to bsnes/dsp. It also introduces
bsnes/sync.sh, which will synchronize all of asnes/ with bsnes/,
excepting the custom speed-focused modules. So far, that's bsnes/ppu
(scanline renderer) and bsnes/dsp (state machine.)
Should make keeping the two ports in sync much, much easier. It's
basically the same thing as before, only you run sync.sh and have a few
duplicated folders now. May make it clearer by creating a stub/ or src/
folder inside bsnes to do all of the copying, so that you only see the
custom folders in bsnes/' root directory.
This release greatly polishes the user interface, adds a new cheat code search utility, adds the snesfilter library, and adds Qt-based GUI support to both snesfilter and snesreader. snesfilter gains 2xSaI, Super 2xSaI and Super Eagle support, plus full configuration for both the NTSC and scanline filters; and snesreader gains support support for multi-file ROM archives (eg GoodMerge sets.)
Statically linking Qt to bsnes, snesfilter and snesreader would be too prohibitive size-wise (~10MB or so.) I have to link dynamically so that all three can share the same Qt runtime, which gets all of bsnes and its modules to ~1MB (including the debugger build); and Qt itself to about ~2.5MB.
However, there is some bad news. There's a serious bug in MinGW 4.4+, where it is not generating profile-guided input files (*.gcno files.) There is also a serious bug in Qt 4.5.2/Windows when using dynamic linking: the library is hanging indefinitely, forcing me to manually terminate the process upon exit. This prevents the creation of profile-guided output files (*.gcda files.) It would be tough enough to work around one, but facing both of these issues at once is too much.
I'm afraid I have no choice but to disable profile-guided optimizations until these issues can be addressed. I did not know about these bugs until trying to build the official v053 release, so it's too late to revert to an all-in-one binary now. And I'm simply not willing to stop releasing new builds because of bugs in third-party software. As soon as I can work around this, I'll post a new optimized binary. In the mean time, despite the fact that this release is actually more optimized, please understand that the Windows binary will run approximately ~10% slower than previous releases. I recommend keeping v052 for now if you need the performance. Linux and OS X users are unaffected.
Changelog:
- save RAM is initialized to 0xff again to work around Ken Griffey Jr Baseball issue
- libco adds assembly-optimized targets for Win64 and PPC-ELF [the latter courtesy of Kernigh]
- libco/x86 and libco/amd64 use pre-assembled blocks now, obviates need for custom compilation flags
- added a new cheat code search utility to the tools menu
- separated filters from main bsnes binary to libsnesfilter / snesfilter.dll
- added 2xSaI, Super 2xSaI and Super Eagle filters [kode54]
- added full configuration settings for NTSC and scanline filters (12+ new options)
- further optimized HQ2x filter [blargg]
- added Vsync support to the Mac OS X OpenGL driver
- added folder creation button to custom file load dialog
- fixed a few oddities with loading of "game folders" (see older news for an explanation on what this is)
- updated to blargg's file_extractor v1.0.0
- added full support for multi-file archives (eg GoodMerge sets)
- split multi-cart loading again (BS-X, Sufami Turbo, etc) as required for multi-file support
- cleaned up handling of file placement detection for save files (.srm, .cht, etc)
- file load dialog now remembers your previous folder path across runs even without a custom games folder assigned
- windows now save their exact positioning and size across runs, they no longer forcibly center
- menus now have radio button and check box icons where appropriate
- debugger's hex editor now has a working scrollbar widget
- added resize splitter to settings and tools windows
- worked around Qt style sheet bug where subclassed widgets were not properly applying style properties
A new version of bsnes has been released. It contains a few minor emulation fixes, as well as user interface improvements. Behind the scenes, the source has been cleaned up more in preparation for running the CPU and PPU (video processor) separately from each other (eg with no enslavement.) This is required for implementing a clock cycle based PPU renderer.
- Greatly improved invalid DMA transfer behavior, should be nearly perfect now
- Major code cleanup -- most importantly, almost all PPU timing-related settings moved back to PPU, from CPU
- Added option to auto-detect file type by inspecting file headers rather than file extensions
- Rewrote video filter system to move it out of the emulation core -- HQ2x and Scale2x will work even in hires and interlace modes now, 50% scanline filter added
- Re-added bsnes window icon
- Added new controller graphic when assigning joypad keys [FitzRoy]
- Redundant "Advanced" panel settings which can be configured via the GUI are no longer displayed
- Improved speed regulation settings
- XP and Vista themes will now apply to bsnes controls
- Added "Path Settings" window to allow easy selection of default file directories
- Tab key now mostly works throughout most of the GUI (needs improvement)
- Main window will no longer disappear when setting a video multipler which results in a window size larger than the current desktop resolution
- Added two new advanced options: one to control GUI window opacity, and one to adjust the statusbar text
Changelog:
- OpenGL (with hardware filter mode support) and SDL video drivers added to Linux port
- OpenAL (with speed regulation disable support) and OSS audio drivers added to Linux port [Nach]
- SDL input driver (with joypad support) added to Linux port
- Emulator pause option added
- Added option to select behavior of bsnes when idle: allow input, ignore input or pause emulator
- Added support to remap common GUI actions to key/joypad presses on the "Input Configuration" screen
- bsnes will now clamp the video output size when it is larger than the screen resolution
- GUI library has been enhanced, and renamed to hiro
- Fullscreen mode now always centers video, rather than approximates
- Fullscreen mode now works correctly on Linux/Openbox
- Extra layer of abstraction in src/ui has been removed, as GUI lib unifies all ports anyway
- Video, audio and input drivers unified into standard library, named ruby
- All custom headers have been merged into a new template library, named nall
- Makefile rewritten, vastly improved. Allows quick toggling of compiled-in drivers
- Makefile: all object files now placed in /src/obj, binary placed in /
- libco greatly enhanced, no longer requires an assembler to build [byuu, blargg, Nach]
- libco SJLJ driver added; bsnes should now build on any Unix-derivative now (Solaris, OS X, PS3, etc) [Nach]
- Fixed register $213e.d4 PPU1 open bus behavior [zones]
- Windows port will not activate screensaver while bsnes is running [Nightcrawler]
- Visual C++ target no longer requires stdint.h
- And lots more -- mostly code refactoring related
This version replaces libui with miu -- a new GUI wrapper library, and cleans up large portions of the source code.
Unfortunately, the GUI rewrite took far, far longer than I ever imagined. As a result, no work has gone into the core emulation for this version. But with the GUI rewrite out of the way, that should change in the near future. And thanks to the new UI library, I can now begin work on adding a cross-platform debugger to bsnes, at long last.
Changelog:
- Major source code cleanup (lib/, ui/miu/, ui/vai/)
- Cheat code editor was broken in v0.026, this is now fixed
- Cheat code file format simplified for human readability
- Makefile install target improvements [belegdol]
- libui replaced with miu GUI library
- Custom video / audio / input drivers replaced with vai HW library
- ppc and ppc64 libco targets added [Vas Crabb]
- x86 and x86-64 libco targets now work on OS X [Lucas Newman]
Tim Allen